Larry Sinclair isn’t the first person to make a sensational claim about a political candidate. He’s also not the first person who has made such a claim and failed to offer supporting evidence. And he’s not the first such person to sue bloggers who commented on such flimsy allegations.

Sinclair made his claims against Barack Obama in 2008. He claimed that in 1999 when Obama was a member of the Illinois Legislature, Obama bought him cocaine after which he performed fellatio on Obama. He got his 15 minutes of fame on the Internet and in the tabloids, but was generally ignored by the mainstream media. He filed a suit against Obama alleging that is was a First Amendment violation for the media to “suppress” the story. That suit was quickly thrown out. He then sued three bloggers who had said that his story was a lie, acknowledging that his plan was to use that suit to subpoena Obama for a deposition under oath. That suit attracted coverage from Politico in June, 2008—

In response to his suit, a lawyer for the anonymous bloggers hired local attorneys and private investigators, and dug up details of Sinclair’s criminal record from Colorado, Florida, and South Carolina. The lawyer, Paul Levy of the nonprofit Public Citizen Litigation Group, provided his client’s filings in federal court, which are publicly available, to Politico.
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He was first arrested on a larceny charge in 1981 in Denver, according to his Colorado arrest record, as filed in federal court. In 1985, he was convicted of theft and of forging a check in Florida, and sentenced to a year in jail, according to Florida records filed in federal court.

After the Florida episode, according to the records, he returned to Colorado, where he faced check fraud and credit card charges in 1986. Then, in 1987, he was convicted in Colorado on more serious forgery charges, and sentenced to 16 years in jail.

In prison, according to state records filed in federal court, Sinclair was disciplined 97 times for infractions including assault, threats, drug possession, intimidation, and verbal abuse, most recently in 1996.

The suit was dismissed in February, 2009.

BTW, Paul Alan Levy also represented the blogger Ace of Spades in the Kimberlin v. National Bloggers Club, et al. RICO Madness LOLsuit.

Yep, Sinclair’s not the first person with a long criminal rap sheet to sue bloggers who questioned an extraordinary claim about a political candidate and drugs—and to lose badly in court.

One more thing … I have no knowledge of whether Sinclair’s claims about Obama are true or false. I will simply note that there are enough things wrong about the former president and his actions that there is no need to tell lies about him.